A Different Sky, page 45
‘I didn’t take the case to make my mark, I didn’t expect to win,’ Mei Lan replied. The helplessness of the prisoner, Ei Ling had incensed her enough to take any risk. Although Mr Cheong had not taken the husband’s case, the man had found another lawyer to press charges of attempted murder against his wife. It had been a drawn-out case with unreliable bribed witnesses and much circumstantial evidence. In the end the judge had unexpectedly ruled in Ei Ling’s favour, throwing out the case. He had also ordered the husband to return the two youngest children to her, providing she could prove she had the means to keep them.
‘You must never expect not to win. So much depends upon the judge and you were lucky enough to have a progressive minded man sitting for this case.’ Mr Cheong poured a glass of water from a flask on the table and placed it before Mei Lan. She nodded and lifted it to her lips; she had not realised how thirsty she was, how much the last hours had taken out of her.
‘If I may give some further advice, it would be best not to offer your services again for free. It will be difficult to make much of a living if you are too altruistic. It is besides not a professional attitude,’ Mr Cheong added.
‘There should be some sort of legal aid for people like Ei Ling,’ Mei Lan replied defiantly. She had shocked everyone in the office by defending Ei Ling without charge.
‘Probably in time there will be such aid, but for now you cannot go against the tide; you are a woman, not a man,’ Mr Cheong answered with a warning frown.
‘I am aware of that; I should also be fighting for equal pay,’ Mei Lan answered bitterly. Her daily workload was no less than that of the male lawyers at Bayley McDonald & Cheong, she was as well qualified as anyone, and yet her pay was half that of a man. Mr Cheong did not reply.
When the reporters had gone and Mei Lan left the room she was surprised to see Ei Ling sitting alone on a bench outside the court. Each day Ei Ling had been taken back to the prison, and Mei Lan was so wrapped up in presenting her defence that she had not thought beyond it.
‘You’re free, you know. Do you have somewhere to go?’ she asked. Ei Ling shook her head as Mei Lan sat down beside her. Mei Lan’s life had been in stasis for so long, but by defending Ei Ling she had been forced into action, forced to summon up parts of herself she had almost forgotten. Ei Ling was drained of colour, thin as a waif.
‘My parents are dead. I have no family except my stepmother who is the one who married me to my husband.’ Ei Ling spoke in a whisper, never raising her eyes from her hands. For a brief moment Mei Lan was filled with emotion and knew that, just as Nakamura’s destructive force had dismantled her, Ei Ling too had been destroyed. Although so many years had passed, nightmares still woke her; she still took something to sleep each night, to bring blackness upon her. So much time had gone by. Nakamura was dead, hanged by the neck, and she had helped to condemn him with her evidence; she should be free of him.
Mei Lan’s mind ran over the few places that might offer help to Ei Ling. She wondered if she should contact the Salvation Army or even the Po Leung Kuk, a government refuge for prostitutes, but quickly decided against this. Wherever Ei Ling went she would have to work, and would have no one to look after her children; they could end up in an orphanage and Ei Ling might yet be forced into prostitution. Mei Lan realised with a pang of guilt that if she had been standing on a precipice before a bottomless drop, the woman could not have appeared more terrified. Mei Lan had been so wrapped up in her own role in the case that its implications for Ei Ling had bypassed her.
‘Whatever he did to me, I had a home. Even prison is somewhere to live,’ Ei Ling whispered. Mei Lan heard the slight resentment in her tone and realised in further distress that freedom placed the woman on a confusing trajectory. She thought again of how easily Ei Ling might be forced into prostitution and abandonment of her children.
‘You had better come home with me until I can find a place for you,’ Mei Lan said reluctantly, regretting the words even as she spoke but seeing no other way, feeling her responsibility.
Ah Siew was not pleased at the appearance of Ei Ling. The woman trailed behind Mei Lan, wan and undernourished, and stood awkwardly inside the door.
‘What are we to do with her? ‘Ah Siew asked loudly, making sure Ei Ling could hear.
‘We shall see,’ Mei Lan answered, not wishing Ah Siew to know how much she already regretted her action. Ei Ling, thin as a stray cat, stared at her appealingly, dependent now upon her.
That night Mei Lan lay staring up at the turning fan, listening to its protesting creak and thinking about Ei Ling. How could she support the weight of someone else’s needs when already it was too much to carry her own? She tossed about in agitation, her emotions in turmoil. That evening Ah Siew relayed some gossip picked up from across the canal: Howard had at last returned from Australia. The thought of him settled in Belvedere once again filled Mei Lan with alarm.
Greta came home eventually after the school sit-in with her head cocked defiantly, her long plaits gone.
‘Who has cut off your hair?’ Little Sparrow screamed.
‘Lots of girls cut their hair. Short hair is the fashion in the Party,’ Greta replied, observing her mother from beneath a fringe hacked off too short with a knife. With her new helmet of hair and eyes that glittered rebelliously, she was transformed into a formidable warrior. Little Sparrow stepped back in confusion.
‘We disbanded only because the Chinese Chamber of Commerce promised to take up our case with the government,’ Greta growled.
‘Why are you so worried about National Service? You’re not a boy; you will only get married.’ Little Sparrow was unable to make any sense of it.
‘It’s a new age, a new world order. I will never get married, and women are now equal to men,’ Greta informed her mother.
Over the next weeks the fight with the students went on. In schools, committees were formed to agitate for the release of arrested comrades and for the unconditional right not to serve Queen and Country. Three thousand students from the eight Chinese Middle Schools once again barricaded themselves into Chung Cheng High School and refused to leave until exemption from National Service was granted. When this did not work, other long camp-ins took place, one lasting twenty-three days, supported by thousands of Middle School students who organised their own lessons and sports.
‘You have been shut up with boys overnight. Who will marry you now?’ Little Sparrow wailed after yet another sit-in.
‘We do not indulge in corrupt bourgeois behaviour,’ Greta replied scathingly. From outside there was the honking of a car horn. Greta looked up and rushed immediately to the window.
‘Where are you going?’ Little Sparrow ran uselessly after her daughter, who dashed out of the front door towards a waiting car filled with young people.
‘We are going to see Mr Lee the lawyer; he will represent us, get our friends out of jail,’ Greta replied over her shoulder as she disappeared through the door. Little Sparrow at once took a taxi to Bougainvillaea House.
‘Who is this Mr Lee?’ Little Sparrow yelled at Mei Lan when she returned from work.
‘He is legal adviser to a number of trade unions,’ Mei Lan replied.
‘What are trade unions?’ Little Sparrow asked, with a loud sob of distress.
Little Sparrow sat in the darkening room, her feet stretched out in front of her. Once again Greta had not returned and Little Sparrow wondered resignedly if there had been another sit-in at school. This seemed to be all pupils did in school nowadays: protest, run wild, sit in. One sit-in seemed to end as another took shape. A perplexed government had already backed down and postponed National Service, caving in to the students’ demand for the release of those arrested. Parents were helpless and without control. The government retaliated by closing all schools.
Upstairs, Little Sparrow heard Bertie moving about. She longed for him to come down and crouch by her chair, putting his head on her lap as if he understood the years they had lost. This happened rarely now that she had arranged for him to go once a week to a brothel on Lavender Road; his mind was filled by thoughts of women other than his mother. In the depths of the house the servants quarrelled, the knock of pans and the hiss of running water from the kitchen heralding the preparation of dinner. The earthy smell of onions came to her through the open window and gave her a feeling of consolidation. She had got used to having a small vegetable garden during the war, and continued to keep one; it reminded her of home. As a child, the smell of onions and the family’s own ordure was always around her. Every day they had spread their own night soil over the earth, beneath the puffball heads of the onions her mother sold in the market. They all helped with the job, ladling out the stinking mess from a wooden bucket.
Lim Hock An had ridden past her home on a tall horse and stopped for a drink of water, ordering it boiled and cooled before he would touch a drop. While he refreshed himself she had sat outside the hut with a bowl of green beans her mother had given her, stringing them for dinner. She remembered the sound of her mother’s soft sobbing coming from inside. When Lim Hock An strode out and mounted his horse, her father had lifted her up to sit behind him. At first the ride was a novelty, but soon the animal’s sweating back and the smell of the man she clung to filled her nose unpleasantly. As it grew dark they reached an inn and he lifted her down in his arms.
‘I want to go home,’ she had said.
‘Your home is now with me,’ he answered, and showed her a rough sleeping pallet in the corner of his room. All night she remembered she had lain awake listening to the sound of him turning and snoring, her body numb with terror. Little Sparrow sighed sadly as these memories washed through her.
Now, at last there were sounds of arrival and the gate swung open with a metallic ring. Greta entered the house in a rush and made straight for the stairs, taking them two at a time. Little Sparrow jumped out of her chair.
‘Where have you been?’ she shouted, following her daughter into the bedroom. Greta did not turn. Busily she pulled out clothes from drawers and the cupboard and stuffed them into her schoolbag.
‘Where have you been again? Do you want to kill me with worry?’ Little Sparrow clenched her fists and shook them at her daughter.
‘Why should I tell you? You don’t understand my life,’ Greta yelled in reply, the hacked-off fringe of hair a hard jagged line above her angry eyes.
‘This time we’re going to hold out for as long as it takes at Chinese High; we’ll organise our own lessons, cook our own food. We’ll force the government to listen to us,’ Greta shouted.
‘I am your mother!’ Little Sparrow screamed, afraid she might cry, the frustration was so big inside her.
‘You are bourgeois. The Party is my family now,’ Greta replied, and returned to her packing. Little Sparrow could not comprehend the strange words her daughter used, but she understood that she was disowned.
‘What about your duty to me?’ Little Sparrow thought she might choke on the words.
‘Duty to parents is from the old life. Our duty is to uplift the masses who break their backs in the fields for people like you.’ Greta spat the words out scornfully.
Little Sparrow drew a breath of pain. For the first time she realised that her daughter knew nothing of her past, had accepted only that she was the wife of a rich man, born to ease and comfort. Suddenly she needed to sit down, but there was no chair.
‘The Party is my mother,’ Greta yelled, swinging the bulging schoolbag over her shoulder.
‘I’m leaving. I will go to China and give my life for the revolution.’ Greta turned and ran down the stairs and out of the door. Once again Little Sparrow heard a car engine start up. A door slammed as the vehicle drove away. She stood transfixed at the top of the stairs, looking down at the open front door and the dark vegetable garden beyond. She bent to pick up a white cotton sock that had fallen from Greta’s schoolbag. The faint perfume of onions came to her from the garden.
During the months that followed Ei Ling’s arrival at Bougainvillaea House, Mei Lan found that the things she had worried about were decided for her. The wide press coverage of Ei Ling’s court case had spread Mei Lan’s name amongst a deprived community. No sooner was Ei Ling settled in a small room with two of her children, than the sister of a woman trapped in a similar marriage appeared to beg Mei Lan’s help. A young prostitute fled a brothel, and arrived on her doorstep having heard of her through a sympathetic client. A mother brought her teenage daughter, beaten and molested by her stepfather, to Bougainvillaea House. Another prostitute, half dead from a botched abortion appeared, as did two sisters who had escaped from the hold of a ship during abduction to a brothel in Penang. A girl covered in burns and cuts from torture by her stepmother collapsed at the gate one night, and was found almost dead the next morning. A First Wife, poisoned by a Second Wife and their common husband, was brought to Mei Lan by a housemaid. Unmarried mothers, raped women, battered wives: soon Bougainvillaea House was filled to capacity by this needy population and Mei Lan was hard pressed to cope, finding it impossible to turn any woman away.
Almost every day she was in touch with the Salvation Army or the Poh Leung Kuk, and moved some girls to their care. Both institutions were themselves stretched to the limit and reluctant to offer help. Ah Siew, and the houseboy and two young housemaids she had been forced to hire, were worn out and struggled with the cleaning, feeding and organisation of the growing crowd. Every few days a fresh arrival appeared as, by word of mouth, Mei Lan’s reputation grew. She took extended leave from Bayley McDonald & Cheong to deal with developments at home, and Mr Cheong was not approving. Ei Ling then surprised Mei Lan by a sudden show of assertiveness, ordering servants about like a martinet, standing no nonsense from anyone, running the house in a capable way. Her face brightened, she began to take care of her appearance and became almost stylish, her hair drawn up and secured with a long ornamental pin. Mei Lan had managed to get custody for her of her remaining two children, standing guarantor for them herself. All were now settled in Bougainvillaea House with Ei Ling, a rowdy crowd of small boys and girls who were packed off each day to school and kept busy with chores when home. The children, who had been scrawny rascals, filled out almost instantly on the plentiful food and responded to care and attention.
At the first medical emergency Mei Lan had called upon Cynthia for help. She had been grateful to find Cynthia at Belvedere when she returned from England, acknowledging against her will that this link again with Howard stirred emotions she would rather not face. Cynthia began to go each day after work to Bougainvillaea House to check on the sick women, setting up a makeshift clinic in the kitchen. In the worst cases she contacted Dr Wong who, still at Joo Chiat Hospital, was prepared to take some patients as charity.
Bougainvillaea House was small and already crowded to overflowing. It was Cynthia who suggested they ask Rose for use of the Belvedere kitchen with its huge gas rings and cooking pots. Rose was hesitant at first to oblige someone she had previously viewed with such suspicion, but frail with angina and bored with the sparse events of her day, Rose found herself suggesting menus and imparting domestic advice, even lending Belvedere linen and mattresses to Mei Lan. Once or twice when Bougainvillaea House could take no more inmates, she had accommodated Mei Lan’s bedraggled women in Belvedere’s empty rooms.
On Howard’s return to Belvedere from Sydney, it had begun to rain and Ah Fong had hobbled from the house under a large black umbrella to help with his suitcases. Howard saw with a shock that all the old man’s teeth were gone. In the rain Belvedere stood sadly, weeds sprouting from guttering, paintwork worn, metal rusting, shutters crooked or missing. His mother had thrown herself upon him, sobbing to such an extent that he suddenly felt responsible for the decay about him, just because he had escaped it. He was upset to find she suffered from angina and had told him nothing about it. She now spent much of her day resting on the old chintz sofa that he saw had been recovered in the usual pink design. The squatters had gone in his years away, and Rose had refurnished his old room with salvaged bits and pieces. Nothing in it was familiar except his saxophone, which stood in a corner in need of a polish. The rain had pelted down all day, drying up only in the evening. Within a few days he was to start work in the Social Welfare Department of the civil service.
That first night Howard heard the scuffling and squeaking of rats, the clank and wheeze of ancient pipes, sniffed the odour of decay and knew he was back in Belvedere. He was no longer afraid of the lurking presence he had sensed as a child in the dark heart of the house, yet, as he lay in bed, he felt the weight of the pace creep over him. He pushed aside the mosquito net, got out of bed and went to the window. The empty white light of the moon spilt over Bougainvillaea House. The fence was gone from the canal and a bridge now stretched across it linking the two plots of land, but in the years he had been away, nothing else appeared to have changed. He had heard from Cynthia that Mei Lan had returned from England some time before and was involved in a prominent court case reported in all the newspapers. In the distance there was the rumble of thunder; lightning shot across the sky. The restlessness he had felt all day took hold of him again. It had begun even before he disembarked from the ship and the clamour, intense odour and heat of the city closed about him again. Anticipation had quickened his pulse as, from the deck of the ship, he watched the green shoreline of Singapore approach.
Howard asked Cynthia about Mei Lan the next evening, when he sat alone with her in the dining room after dinner. Cynthia looked at him sharply but Howard’s face gave nothing away. She told him then about the interlocking arrangements between Belvedere and Bougainvillaea House and the history of Mei Lan’s shelter.
‘She’s changed many women’s lives for the better, and for her it’s a way of healing; by helping the damaged she’s helping herself. It’s like Wilfred writing his book,’ she said, listening to the shuffling feet of Belvedere’s three old lodgers as they left the dining room.
